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The Epic Store won't accept 'crappy games,' says Tim Sweeney
- Thread starter chadskin
- Start date
You are trying too hard. Shitposters will shitpost, we can't do nothing about it.
Can someone tell me exactly what the problem with crappy games on a digital store is?
Is anyone randomly buying games by browsing the store without doing any kind of research?
I've never made a gaming purchase that wasn't supported by either word of mouth, youtube/streaming videos, forums discussions or the pedigree of a developer.
This whole issue with crappy games just seems to be a complete non issue that has been fabricated to smear steam. Not to mention that I can't think of a resonable argument for why books, movies and music would be exempt from the same problem.
Is anyone randomly buying games by browsing the store without doing any kind of research?
I've never made a gaming purchase that wasn't supported by either word of mouth, youtube/streaming videos, forums discussions or the pedigree of a developer.
This whole issue with crappy games just seems to be a complete non issue that has been fabricated to smear steam. Not to mention that I can't think of a resonable argument for why books, movies and music would be exempt from the same problem.
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Epic needs to distinguish themselves from the competition. Their competition is Steam. Steam basically allows whatever. Epic will not allow whatever which is better because Epic says so. (It actually probably is better when you magically can distinguish quality from whatever with 100% success rate but I doubt Epic curator team are wizards. Or actually exist at the moment.)
I get the PR angle, but I see this viewpoint expressed here on this forum in almost every steam thread.
There is a prevailing opinion that Quirky jRPG #257 failed to make its devs any money because of Hentai Tits Slider Puzzle #38 hogging its place in the limelight when the actual truth is that Quirky jRPG #257 failed because it had to compete with Quirky jRPGs #1-256.
Then you have the good old discussion what is and is not a game, ie the "walking simulators/VNs/David Cage's games do not belong here and are trash" crowd, which muddles the water even further.
And Jim Sterling and his ilk who embelish the problem for clicks.
And the Valve being morons and automating their process so much they can't even stop people making Rape Day appear in search results.
I guess it makes sense if you watch if from some kind of twisted perspective like that. Maybe it's just a coincidental convenience that none of that applies to movies, cartoons, tv-shows, music, books or any other media form even though each one of these has oceans of crap that are an order of magnitude larger and despicable than our video game crap.
I don't see much advantage to curation except for some kind of boutique shop that offer few games which they promote extensively. Curation is only a problem if you are mentally incapable of figuring out any other way of buying games than typing random stuff into the search bar and buying the first thing that shows up. Obviously I'm against illegal and hateful content but I don't think it's a big issue if Rape Day appears for a few days as long as it's removed quickly enough.
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Yes, that is how it was for a long time, and that criticism was one of the reasons why they experimented with Greenlight.
I personally got a template denial message for La-Mulana...around 4 times I believe?
I don't know anything about this game. But quality control is a thing in literally every store. I'm not sure why you guys expect digital games stores to be any different.do you think this game should be refused from the store?
When we look at the types of games he specifies I think its quite fair to use the word crappy. A even harsher word would probably have been even better.
That having been said trusting Tim to not complete do a 180 flip on this in the future is probably a bad idea.
All those mad indie devs who blame Steam all the time wouldn't get a second glance from Epic, tbh.
Anyway..
Anyway..
The word crappy is a broad one. A lot of legitimate devs are releasing games that looks crappy.
Anyone taking a first look at Undertale or West of Loathing think these are crappy games. Curation never works. And I took amazing games here. What about bad looking, bad games but made by legitimate devs ?
Are you willing to leave steam at the last moment and generally shitpost them in paid articles? Congrats you're in, here's your hat.
No problem with what they call crappy games I don't buy them and power point simulator known as Rape Day was never on sale on Steam.
No problem with porn games, I enjoy them and a lot of eroges are fun. Fate GO franchise moved 3000 million $ but people don't realize type moon wouldn't be able to release the original Fate/State night fuwanovel because would be considered a game under -not censored realta nua remake I mean the original one they first released on comiket- "grey area" steam new policy, since you know how they recover mana... Shame on them.
No problem with porn games, I enjoy them and a lot of eroges are fun. Fate GO franchise moved 3000 million $ but people don't realize type moon wouldn't be able to release the original Fate/State night fuwanovel because would be considered a game under -not censored realta nua remake I mean the original one they first released on comiket- "grey area" steam new policy, since you know how they recover mana... Shame on them.
I wonder if Epic would block kusoge like Left Alive, or is it just games that look crappy to their curator?
Would something like Undertale, Pony Island or Doki Doki Literature club get through?
Would something like Undertale, Pony Island or Doki Doki Literature club get through?
Yeah, and Valve admitted that they would have rejected games like Stardew Valley.
Except today again, many of the people championing this system, are categorically the losers of this system. They're so quick to forget that they're not the special ones.
Maybe from a customer point of view a curated store is less of an advantage. But from a developer point of view having your game drown is a sea shite is less than desirable.
The amount of journalists, players and most disappointingly of all - devs, who seen to be fine with a return to the dark days of Valve rejecting games is shocking me.
The big successes of great, one person or garage dev, indie games is the direct result of Steam allowing small, experimental stuff right next to where you'd go to buy the next Triple A game on PC.
The big successes of great, one person or garage dev, indie games is the direct result of Steam allowing small, experimental stuff right next to where you'd go to buy the next Triple A game on PC.
Yeah, IF they let you on the store. They might reject your game because it looks like a mobile game or because you showed a nipple.
Amazon Kindle Store has quality control? I sure would like to know what marvelous works of art they actually refuse.
But they don't.
They drown in a sea of mediocrity.
Fuck, they drown in a sea of excellence.
EDIT: goddamn double post, sorry
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures/home
So what's crappy then? Indie games with no big name?
Pretty sure they mean games that take store bought assets fire them into unity in the crudest way possible, and sell them on the store. Not crappy games per say, but fake games.
I'm going to make a lot of friends again. But if your game is hidden by trash, maybe that means it actually belong here.
Because the reality is that no good games is hidden by bad games. But good games are just hidden by better games.
Which is a total hypocrisy. Unreal Engine and Unity were meant to be accessible to everyone. So that people who don't know how to code or to do 3D modeling could just make a game and express themselves with assets and scripts bought on their store. There's a reason why there's a Unity and UE Marketplace.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/240720/discussions/0/3288067088087771547/
Well, it should be. According to some people's definition.
The exclusive devs fear the competition on Steam. They do not want to compete. For every exclusive game on EGS you can find ten other good games on Steam. They want the spotlight. They do not care about consumers and features in the Steam store.
It's understandable but it is not good on the long run. Just my view.
EDIT: Also the hat full of money.
I was more so talking traditional stores like GameStop, Walmart, etc.
At some point good games are (or will be) lost though
It's the same with music, there are so many bands and artists making music, that some great albums come out and don't get heard by enough people to generate any hype or to be signal boosted to more people
Review sites can go in and find the great stuff and promote it, but everything is so fragmented and the volume is so great that things will get lost. History is full of amazing albums that barely anyone at the time heard, but then later were discovered and became really highly regarded
It's not really true that every great indie game ever just needs to go on Steam and it's inherent greatness will proper it into being a hit
In some cases, sure, but to imply every game on Steam has sold only as many copies as its quality deserves at some point stops being accurate
I don't agree with how Epic are doing things, but there is no reason why we can't have a storefront alongside Steam that hand picks and curates the games they want to sell, to ensure a consistent level of quality (Ideally this store wouldn't be moneyhatting at all and wouldn't only be selling titles that were probably going to be hits anyway)
Steam would still be around for those who don't think they'll get on the curated store, but it would mean there is somewhere people can go knowing they'll only find hand picked quality titles
That's basically how PSN and the eShop worked (or used to work) where they would generally take the best indie games from PC and put them on the store, which consumers took as a sign the game was quality and worth their time
But Amazon Kindle Store is the actual equivalent of Steam. It's all digital and shit.
I don't have any experience with the store, but if it's all shit they probably need to do some quality control.
Then you cant complain about the indie games being hidden when your solution is to not sell them at all.
I never said every great indie games will be a hit on Steam. I said that if they aren't a hit, their place wont be taken by a bad game but a more popular and often better game.
Yes, some good games are being lost. But not because of bad games. It's not Hentai Puzzle 123 that took a good indie game's lunch and sales. But a better game. And the solution to that is to release less games. Not bad games but also good ones. Which means the good games being lost will simply not be allowed for sale.
I browse the new release section of Steam everyday. The amount of low effort, troll or "crappy" games is high. There is no way around this issue.
Visiting my own store home page is like living in a bubble with stuff that interests me.
EDIT: I have to browse trough the trash to find interesting games that do not appear on my store home. The store if full of trash. Sorry.
Visiting my own store home page is like living in a bubble with stuff that interests me.
EDIT: I have to browse trough the trash to find interesting games that do not appear on my store home. The store if full of trash. Sorry.
Yeah but visibility is a marketing problem and curation only benefits devs that get to be on the store.
my favorite posts are the ones that start with: I don't have any experience with x, but
it shows that it's really worth paying attention to
It's funny cause I just did:
Here, I highlighted what I considered troll games in red. In blue, the crappy looking ones but still genuinely made despite their look. Out of 25 games, 1 troll asset flip and 7 crappy games. That means 17 legitimate decent/regular looking games. Just on the first page.
The hell is this condescending shit supposed to mean?
I was asked a random question about a random store I have not used?
What was I supposed to say?
This now makes me wonder if the likes of DROD would pass muster. Superb puzzle games, incredibly low budget visually.
(Also: Spiderweb's RPGs, Stephen's Sausage Roll)
Of course not.
The latter games all found their success via word of mouth. If you don't have notoriety, you're not getting in.
I was amused when Diagnosis Murder - yes, that Dick Van Dyke hospital detective series - randomly had a couple of characters turn up, a brother and sister named Regan and Carter Sweeney. I assume there's a random American writer who was secretly a fan!
I didn't offer a solution, I said there could be a place for a curated storefront as well as Steam
A lot of people don't even bother to look at games on Steam because for every game that might be a hidden gem there are a lot of bad games or meme games or whatever
I pretty much only looked at games during sales but stopped when I would need to scroll through about 20 pages to find a game I'd even heard of
In the end I would just dip into Steam to add a game to my wishlist when it got a lot of buzz and/or positive press from outside of Steam
That way I could just check my wishlist during sales
I think this is why people want curation. I mean, it doesn't bother me at all (except when they take an age to remove Rape/Nazi games) because I found a workaround, but if developers are betting on me seeing their game on Steam then they're out of luck because I don't check Steam for games anymore
If there was a hypothetical storefront (not Epic) with hand picked indie games and a proven track record of only selling good games, then yeah I'll probably jump on once a week to see what the new releases are
If that were the case, Steam would still exist, so any game of any quality would still be able to be sold, so my solution isn't to "not sell the game"
If I was to place a bet, I would have to put it on the bolded. It would have to be games that have no "attractive impactful image" or a popular dev behind the wheel, so anything without a decent marketable style will likely be regarded as shit game.
Which would likely mean that if we were to assume a next Undertale, Doki Doki Literature Club, etc will not see the light if every store goes this direction. Heck, depends on how harsh and strict their curation team is, games like The Binding of Isaac may not even be possible.
If everyone take up this curation model, then we would see less varied and experimental indie games, but rather games that try to fit in that curation team's marketable vision so they could get into the Epic store.
I'm also assuming this is the "we need better curations so lesser known dev has a chance to shine" folks are arguing for.
As a customer, I don't rely on Steam's recommendation, it does sometimes pop a game or two into my view, games that weren't in my radar before, but I mostly rely on here and there to find games to throw money at.
As an aspiring solo dev, my take is that as a nobody, I'll need to take advantage of Steam's lax vetting policy if I'm to sell to the largest amount of people, but I wouldn't expect their algorithm to do me much good; since as we all know, the store is flooded with shit games every moment. The best idea I could come up with for exposure is just to drop a word here and there and hope my game will slowly pick up.
Wanting strict vetting policy and still being able to throw my game on sale easily on the big popular platform is like wanting to eat my cake and have it too. Of course, I don't plan on throwing assets flip or broken game out, but I would expect a nobody's "greatest game idea ever" has about as much marketability as everyone else's bestest idea.
This is not saying that Steam shouldn't do better when shits like Rape Day goes on their store.